


My Own Soul's Warning

by alrightginger



Series: Back of a Hurricane [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Fred Lives, Genderbending, Getting Back Together, Harriet has flaws people, I cannot stress this enough, It's Okay, Post-War, The angst tag is there for a reason, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alrightginger/pseuds/alrightginger
Summary: It’s been five years since the war ended, and four years since Harry disappeared from George’s life without a word. When a chance meeting suddenly brings the two of them back together again for a night, George finds it hard to let old wounds of the past heal when they’ve never really scarred over in the first place.
Relationships: Harry Potter/George Weasley
Series: Back of a Hurricane [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010349
Comments: 21
Kudos: 102





	1. Eternity's Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. This work was originally published months ago, but I took it down after my anxiety spiked over comments. I cannot stress this enough. This story isn't as happy as LIAF, though it does have a happy ending. You're either going to love it or hate it. If you hate it, click the back button. Go outside and talk a walk. Pet a dog. I won't be putting up with mean or rude comments any longer. They will get deleted. I do this for fun and with what little free time I have. 
> 
> I don't have to make anyone happy but myself, so criticism, especially if it's not in anyway constructive, is not welcomed. 
> 
> I know that sounds harsh, but it's where I am right now. 
> 
> I enjoy all of my readers, and I know that not all of my stories will connect to all of you at once. 
> 
> I just ask that you think before you post. <3

_ If you could see through the banner of the sun, into eternity's eyes, like a vision reaching down to you, would you turn away? _

_ \-- _

Everyday is more or less the same for George. 

He wakes up to see the clock flashing the same time every morning. He then kicks the covers off and goes downstairs to find his coffee pot charmed to brew at the exact time that he needs it, and thanks himself every single morning as he sips the warm liquid through his grogginess. 

Afterwards, he dresses himself in the most hideous color of robes he can find. Robes that he knows would make her cringe if she were here. This morning’s robes are a particularly garish shade of magenta that he  _ has  _ seen her cringe over a very long time ago. 

He throws them on because he can perfectly visualize the crinkle of her nose in disgust while doing so.

He knows he’s doing this out of a mixture of bitterness and spite. Out of a wounded heart that wants to lash out at her anyway that it possibly can for leaving. 

He knows that he’s immature doing this, and at twenty-five he really should have such impulses under control, but he allows himself once or twice a day to cave. To be a lesser person. 

He deserves that right after everything at least.

So he allows himself one last look in the mirror, one last snide comment over the fact that she would hate his robes but she has no say in them anymore, and then he molds himself into the proper adult he should be, appartating to the newly opened shop at Hogsmeade. 

He’s fluffing out his robes when their newest hire comes out from the back, not spotting him behind the wall of boxed product she’s carrying, and nearly knocking over them both in the process. 

“Watch out, Jessica!” he calls, steadying the tilting stack before it can collapse on him. 

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry Mr. Weasley,” she says, turning the boxes so he can see her apologetic face. “I didn’t know you had come in.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. You know you can charm them though. You don’t have to carry so many at once.”

“I know, Mr. Weasley. Sometimes it’s hard to not do things the muggle way.”

He wishes Jessica wouldn’t call him Mr. Weasley. He says it’s because it’s making him feel old, but lately it’s because he’s facing the reality that he  _ is  _ becoming older. Designing pranks and running the shop isn’t as fun as it used to be. It still feels like it’s his purpose. The thing he should be doing with his life. But he’s noticed he’s doing it with a lack of vigor lately. As if it’s not the only thing he wishes he had. 

Fred says it’s because he’s gone too long without getting laid after Harry left him. That he should try hooking up with Jessica which is a horrible,  _ terrible  _ idea, and George has told Fred so. Numerous times.

Besides the fact that he simply doesn’t  _ want _ a quick shag with the girl, it’s bad for business. They’d have to see each other every day they came in for work. She’s good looking enough, he admits.  _ More  _ than good looking enough, honestly. Her blonde hair and blue eyes paired with her high cheekbones get a lot of appreciative looks from the customers entering the shop, but to George her features are all wrong. They’re too soft against his own. They don’t do a thing for him. 

Fred had scoffed when George told him this. He had told George that he’s simply too hung up on Harry to notice how fit Jessica is. How willing she is to become a distraction for him. 

Which isn’t true. 

He may still be hung up on Harry, and has been for the past four years, but he isn’t unobservant for it. He notices the looks Jessica gives him. The way her eyes slide over him appreciatively. He knows she’s timid enough to wait for him to make the first move, but he just can’t. He can’t bring himself to do it. 

It wouldn’t be fair to either of them, and while he’s an arse about most things lately, he refuses to be one over this.

He’s got to maintain some decency, after all. 

“We’re likely going to have a busy day today,” George says. Jessica is somewhere near the back, but he knows she’s listening. “It’s the first Hogsmeade visit for students.”

“Reckon we’ll get another letter from McGonagall this year?” Jessica’s voice floats around him. It’s smooth and sweet. It never cuts through him. It never raises enough to do so. “She scares me just a bit.”

“Minnie is a kitten,” George says. He’s not the least bit concerned with the Headmistress. He’s dealt with her plenty of times. “If anything happens, just leave it to me. I know how to handle her.”

He’s shuffling through a pile of mail the owl had dropped off right before he got there when a pretty pink envelope slips through, falling on the checkout counter in front of him.

He immediately knows what it is even before he reads the neatly printed return address. 

“Fucking hell,” he curses to himself, rubbing his jawline. 

He’s ignored three similar little pink envelopes just like this one over the past two months. It isn’t that he necessarily wants to ignore his youngest brother’s attempts to invite him to his engagement party this weekend. It’s more of the fact that he just feels like he can’t do it. He’s happy for Ron. Truly he is. It's just hard to look at the ring resting on Hermione’s left ring finger, knowing that Harry turned down the one he slid across to her at his parents kitchen table five years ago. 

He realizes what a jerk that makes him sound like. It’s why he doesn’t want to give a definite answer to the RSVP they keep attempting to send to him. 

His mother dropped the last letter off, begging him to at least try. Imploring with him that she knows he’s hurting. That he’s been hurting for a while now, but Ron is his brother and we should always try for family. 

George hates that excuse. 

He tries hard every day at simple things like just getting out of bed and getting dressed for the day. He isn’t sure he has the energy to try at something big like this. 

Without being able to help himself, he wonders if there’s a girl out there somewhere with raven hair, clutching an envelope just like this one in her hands. 

She hasn’t come back home in four years. 

He wonders if this will bring her back. 

\--

_ Harry couldn’t look at him without crying.  _

_ Last night, she had sat with him, stroking his hair until he had fallen asleep. He had been groggy with a headache after having his ear blown off, and he had let sleep take him quickly. She was the last thing he saw when he closed his eyes, and in his state of unconsciousness he still heard her sniffling for some time. When he had woken up, however, she wasn’t there.  _

_ “Harry,” he called through Ginny’s door. He jiggled the knob a bit, finding that it was still locked. He could easily unlock it with his wand, but he was trying to be respectful of Harry’s space right now. “Please open the door and talk to me.” _

_ “I can’t,” her voice, smaller than he’s ever heard it, called back. He knew like he knew the back of his hand that she had her forehead pressed against the door. He pressed his own against the other side.  _

_ “Why not, love?” _

_ “I can’t look at you without wanting to burst into tears. This is all my fault. I knew that this was a bad idea. This whole stupid mulitple Potter plan.”  _

_ “Oh, come on. It could have been worse. I could have died.”  _

_ This, he realized a moment too late, was the absolute wrong thing to say. Harry wailed on the other side of the door, the sound of her fists banging against it.  _

_ “Don't say that! It’s all I could think about last night! Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured you dead. You looked dead when they brought you in!”  _

_ “But I’m not dead! I’m fine!” _

_ “You lost an ear! Because of me!” _

_ “I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to this. I’d do anything to keep you safe. You know that.” _

_ “You shouldn’t have to do anything to keep me safe,” she said, her voice catching on her sobs. “You should have a normal witch for a girlfriend who doesn’t put a price on your head.” _

_ George frowned, tired of talking to Harry through the barrier of his sister’s door. She was working herself up into one of her infamous freak outs, and he wasn’t about to let her get into another state where she broke up with him again.  _

_ “That’s it,” he growled, pulling his wand out. “I’m coming in. You need to stand back.” _

_ “Wait, no! I’m not ready --” _

_ “Potter, I’m not playing around! Get back now.” _

_ To his surprise, Harry gave up the fight and he heard a shuffling of feet. When he was certain that she was safely out of the way, he unlocked the door with perhaps more force than necessary, but the tension in his body instantly evaporated when he spotted her standing on the other side of the room. She was always beautiful, but she was even more so when she was frightened. It was a state of vulnerability she rarely let anyone see.  _

_ George treated her with care when she was like this because she trusted him with it.  _

_ Her bottom lip quivered as she took in his wrapped head.  _

_ “I’m sorry,” she said, pawing at her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant -- I didn’t want…” _

_ He caught her a second before she crumbled to the floor, scooping her up and cradling her like she was a small child. _

_ “It’s okay,” he whispered against the crown of her head. He breathed her in because he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to. Time was ticking for them. “Hey, everything is fine. I’m fine.” _

_ “You purposefully riled me up at the Dursleys!” Harry wailed, her fist tapping lightly against his chest. The front of his shirt was getting soaked from her crying. “You made that stupid comment about there being more of you, and just one of me…” _

_ “You know I can’t resist riling you up,” he teased, rubbing her back.  _

_ “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you,” she said, ignoring him. She nuzzled her face into his shirt, and left it there. “I don’t want to even think about it.”  _

_ “Then don’t,” he told her simply. He knew that it was easier said than done. “Think about something else.” _

_ She sniffled. “Like what?” _

_ “Like how we’re alone in a room for the first time in forever,” he offered. _

_ She laughed against him and he felt himself melt into it, leaning into her more.  _

_ “You’re such a stupid guy. How can you even think about doing that sort of stuff when you just lost an ear?” _

_ “Because I am a guy, of course. I’m willing to use it for my benefit. A sympathy shag, or what have you.” _

_ “You’re so stupid.”  _

_ “Only for you.” _

_ Harry leaned back to look at him, her eyes still glistening with tears. He leaned down to press his lips against hers, trying to breathe in several things at once into their kiss.  _

_ Yes, he told her he nips at her bottom lip, I was worried too.  _

_ Yes, he tried to make her understand as she parted her lips, I worry about losing you too. I worry about losing you all the fucking time that it frightens me.  _

_ Please, he begged as he tilted her head, stay with me. Don’t go on the mission Dumbledore has for you. The one you won’t tell me about. Be with me instead. Let me protect you.  _

_ She exhaled her resistance into him. All the things she couldn’t say out loud to him got breathed into him through their kiss. He didn’t understand, but he tried. Or, perhaps, he simply clung to her while he still could. While he still had the time to do so. _

_ He felt the first wall being put up between them in that kiss.  _

\--

Night seems to fall quickly now. 

It’s the one good thing about the shop, the fact that it’s like a vortex that he can step into and lose touch with reality for a few hours. 

But the thing about escaping reality is that it eventually catches up to him, and while the day moves relatively fast, the nights seemingly stall. He hasn’t slept properly since the war ended. He can’t close his eyes without seeing visions of Harry’s lifeless body being carried in Hagrid’s giant arms. Or, more recently, the last image of him saying goodbye to her before she went to Romania both at Charlie’s request of needing help with his dragons and at her own need to disappear for a while. 

He didn’t know it would be his last time seeing her. 

He didn’t know that when she wanted to disappear, it would be for good. 

He isn’t certain he would have let her go if he did, but she had really never been his to fully hang onto. He had to share her with the world before and during the war, and afterwards, he had to share her with the aftereffects of the war. All the ghosts and scars she lived with, he lived with too.

There would be times he would check on her only to find her lifelessly staring at the wall. She wouldn’t even hear him enter the room. He remembers the haunting look of her eyes, how dull they became after the war. He had quit the shop for several months, stretching himself thin between Fred being in the hospital with a badly mangled leg and Harriet being at the Burrow with the war slowly chipping away at what had been left of her. 

_ “She hasn’t eaten anything in days, George,”  _ he remembers his mother telling him, helplessly handing him a tray of food in hopes that he could do something.  _ “She’s withering away.” _

He remembers carrying her the little tray every single day, opening the door only to find her turned towards the wall, still in bed. She always looked like a child then, hugging her legs to her chest. Sometimes she was asleep, sometimes she wasn’t. She slept so much right after the war that it frightened George. It had been hard to get her to wake.

And then when she woke, it’s like she couldn’t go back to sleep. Like she didn’t know how.

_ “You need to sit up and eat, love,”  _ he remembers whispering to her, rubbing his hand up and down her back soothingly. He remembers trying to ignore the way her ribs were poking out.  _ “Come on, now.” _

She didn’t look at him. She never did those first few weeks after. Instead, she blinked slowly at the wall. 

_ “It’s gone,”  _ she would tell him quietly. 

_ “What’s gone, love?”  _ he’d ask, leaning in closer to hear her. 

_ “It’s gone,”  _ she would repeat. It had been all she seemed to be able to say.  _ “It’s really gone.” _

He’d roll her over, shivering as her emerald eyes slid to him but never focused on him. He looks back now and realizes that she had left long before she ever went to Romania. 

He shakes his head, trying his best to bring himself back into this moment. It’s concerning how easily he’s able to slip into memories like that now. Even more concerning that he has a harder time remembering the happier memories. Those never trap him. Those never make him lose touch with reality and track of time. 

He wonders why that is.

He takes a couple more steps before he realizes that he’s settled into another fit of night wandering after the shop has closed. It’s become a bad habit of his, disappearing for long hours instead of going home to sleep. Hogsmeade is dead, save for a few people like him though they seem a bit less aimless in their wandering. 

He knows he should go home, or at least go visit Fred who is living with Angelina above their original shop in Diagon Alley. George himself moved into a flat away from their new shop, wanting the illusion of space between him and Wheezes. Fred never wants space. From George or the shop. Fred never questions when he turns up at odd hours, though Angelina gives him an odd, appraising look every now and then. More like she’s concerned for him, rather than she’s miffed over him being there. She won’t say anything, but he can see it in the expression she wears. It’s the same one everyone wears around him. 

He sighs. If he left now, he’d likely make it in time for a late dinner and a few good natured digs at Fred walking with a limp because he’s an old man, rather than the fact that he’s permanently walking like that from a war their family hardly ever talks about now. 

If he leaves now, he probably still stands a chance at not diving into a bottle of Firewhiskey for the night. Something that is becoming one of his worst habits lately. 

If he leaves now…

He pushes forward, his eyes frosting over and looking into Harry’s dull post war eyes once again in his head. It’s all he gets of her now. It’s like living with a fucking ghost, but he wants her to haunt him. 

He wants her to tear his soul apart, because it’s always belonged to her. Even if she never belonged to him. 

He’s so far gone in those dull eyes that he doesn’t realize where he’s stepping, running into someone in the process. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going,” the person says and George instantly freezes because he  _ knows  _ that voice. Except it isn’t her, surely. It  _ can’t  _ be her. He’s still in the space between reality and his daydreams, and he’s projected her voice onto this person. 

It takes several long seconds before he can bring himself to fully focus on the person in front of him, and when he does he realizes that he’s still staring at a pair of emerald eyes though these aren’t as dull and lifeless and the ones he keeps imagining. 

These eyes are bright, and focused on him. Only on him. When the person smiles, he watches the way her eyes settle into familiar smile lines. Ones he hadn’t seen since his oldest brother’s wedding.

“Oh my god,” the voice says again. The voice he hasn’t heard in years now, save for inside his own head. It doesn’t sound as quiet and faint as it once did. It lights up for him. “It's  _ you _ . It’s really you.”

He watches as the person removes their hood and he’s face to face with the ghost that’s been haunting him all this time, though now she’s in the flesh. Emerald eyes, dark raven hair. She looks like a fairy tale character. A princess out of a story book, though his heart has hardened to her like she’s a villain. 

She’s beaming at him, and he’s staring back at her like an idiot, unable to think of anything else to do. 


	2. Thunderheads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be uploading a chapter a day until it's all back up again. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all your really nice comments, and for supporting me!

_Oh I tried diving, even though the sky was storming, thunderheads were forming._

_\--_

_Harry slept for two whole days after the war ended._

_George had been frightened, but his mother assured him that it was likely normal. Ron and Hermione had slept a similar length, though they had woken up before Harry. They were all simply exhausted, having been living in a tent for months doing Merlin knows what for Dumbledore._

_George still wasn’t sure._

_Though he’d never admit it, George was still bitter then over being left in the dark when it came to Harry’s mission. She didn’t trust him with it like she trusted Ron and Hermione, and that stung._

_But he buried that twisted thought deep down where he would need a shovel to dig it out later, because he didn’t have time to focus on it now. Harry needed him now._

_When Harry finally did wake up, that had been when her eyes changed. George could tell then something had been wrong. It was as if she left part of herself out there with the war. As if it never came back to her._

_She looked like a shell of herself, and George found it difficult to adjust to this new version of Harry._

_But still he tried._

_He put off reopening the shop while she and his brother needed him. He spent his time between St. Mungo’s, where Fred was recovering, and the Burrow, where Harry was recovering._

_Where Fred was easy to talk to and still much the same, Harry was very nearly unapproachable. George got it. Honestly he did. Fred had suffered physical trauma. Harry’s had been emotional._

_He just wasn’t sure how to deal with the barriers she had put up. She kept everything in, and everyone else out. Including George. Sometimes it felt like especially George._

_“Keep trying,” his mother would tell him, as if that wasn’t the only thing he was doing. “She’s in there somewhere. You’re the only one she’ll respond to. You’ve got to keep trying.”_

_So he moved back home for a spell. Every morning, he’d wake up early before Harry had stirred to go visit Fred, making sure he was settled for the day and doing alright. Then he’d head back to the Burrow, finding Harry still asleep and every morning he would still start when he saw her. She looked dead. He’d seen her dead during the battle at Hogwarts, and now it was like he couldn’t see past that whenever he looked at her._

_He’d shake his head, reminding himself that she was alive by some miracle and needed to eat to stay that way. He’d rub her back, placing a quick set of kisses along her temple, imploring her to wake up, and then he’d coax her into eating something._

_She’d then crawl right back into bed after nearly having to be spoon fed, and he’d attempt to wake her up for the other two meals of the day._

_This was how it went for several weeks._

_Then one day, after visiting with Fred, George returned home to find Harry out of bed already, staring out of the window. This was progress, surely? Though she didn’t turn or acknowledge him, surely the simple fact that she was out of bed was a good sign._

_“Hey,” he greeted her._

_He wondered for the first time since they’d been together if he was allowed to wrap his arms around her. Was that still okay? Was it allowed? He settled for tucking some hair behind her ear instead._

_“I’m sorry you’re having to do so much for me,” she said so softly that he wasn’t sure he heard her right. “I’m sorry your life is on hold right now.”_

_“Don’t worry about that. I’d do anything for you. You know that. You are my life.”_

_She turned to him, blinking slowly. Her eyes were still dull, and her cheekbones more pronounced than ever before._

_She didn’t look like the same girl that had left the Burrow nearly a year ago._

_“Do you remember what you promised me two summers ago at the Dursleys? Before we...before we made love for the first time?”_

_Of course he remembered._

_It had been etched inside his heart ever since._

_“That I wouldn’t let you go until you were ready?”_

Please don’t ask me to do that, _he thought to himself._ Not again. Not now. I’m not ready to let go of you. It’ll kill me.

_She smiled at him and it didn’t reach her eyes, but she crossed the distance between them to lay her head against his chest and he thought that maybe she was asking him to hold on a bit tighter instead._

_And so he did._

_And for a while it seemed as if things were getting better. Harry didn’t need as much coaxing to eat. She started venturing out of George’s old bedroom, and most of all she started leaning back into George’s touch more. When he kissed her, she kissed back._

_Things were getting better._

_So when Charlie sent a letter home stating that he needed help with his dragons, and asking their mum if one of his brothers could be spared and Harry had volunteered instead, George didn’t think too much of it._

_It would be good for her, he thought. A change of scenery. A purpose. It was all therapeutic, and needed._

_She packed her bags, kissed him goodbye and told him she loved him. That she loved him more than anything in the world. Her eyes were still dull when she left._

_And then she didn’t come back._

\--

For several long moments, George isn’t sure what to say. 

He’s imagined this moment countless times. He’s imagined kissing her, shouting at her, asking her why she left, where she’s been…

There have been thousands of things he wanted to say to her when he finally saw her again.

But now that it’s actually here, now that she’s standing close enough for him to reach out and touch her, he’s dumbstruck. She seems to realize the state she’s put him in, taking pity on him with a soft smile and adjusting her hair so it’s so longer caught in her hood. He notices it then, the fact that she’s cut it. He’s never seen her with short hair before, and yet here she stands, hair barely brushing her shoulders where a smattering a freckles lie that he’s kissed so many times. It’s changed, just like the rest of her. 

“Oh,” she says, blushing when she catches him staring. The foolish part of him in the back of his mind swells with pride that a look from him can still warrant reddened cheeks from her. “Yeah, I cut it. About a year ago, actually.”

_A whole year,_ he thinks to himself. _A whole year you’ve been like this and I never once imagined you with shorter hair. What else about you has changed?_

He realizes that he’s standing there, just staring at her awkwardly, but he can’t seem to stop. He can’t seem to wrap his mind around anything else other than the fact that she’s here, and he’s not dreaming. 

“Please say something,” she says after a long awkward pause. She’s biting her bottom lip. He faintly registers that he’s also bitten her lip, once upon a time. 

When he finally finds his voice, it’s gruff and speaking before he can even register what he’s saying. His mind is going into autopilot like it does every single day, getting him through the moment.

“What are you doing here?” he hears himself ask. 

She sucks in a breath of surprise at his question, either not expecting it or not expecting him to actually speak to her. Maybe, like him, she hasn’t heard his voice in so long that when she finally did it shook her to her core. 

“Ron and Hermione’s engagement party,” she says simply. She adjusts her cloak around her, shivering slightly. George himself feels like he’s on fire. “They don’t know I’m here, actually. No one does. It’s sort of a surprise.”

“You haven’t been home in four years,” George points out. 

_Why now,_ he wants to ask. _Why are you coming home now for them when you couldn’t come home for me?_

If Harry sees the unspoken question in his eyes, she doesn’t say anything. Instead she laughs, tucking a now springy curl behind her ear. Her hair must have been weighed down with her length that her waves turned far more curly after she cut them. He resists the urge to pull on it, straightening it out just to watch it curl back up.

“I know. It’s so weird coming back. Everything seems the same.”

_It isn’t. Nothing’s been the same. You just haven’t been around to know._

“Where are you staying?” he hears himself ask. 

A second later he wants to slap himself. He doesn’t have a right to know that sort of thing anymore, but she smiles at him like she doesn’t mind. 

“Grimmauld,” she tells him, shuddering. “It’s just as dark and dreary as I remember, but no one will come looking for me there.”

_You have no idea the distances I was willing to cross to find you before. The lengths I was willing to go to. I was desperate for you._

George swallows that thought down. “That sounds depressing.” 

“It is,” Harry replies with a voice far too cheery. “But it’s only for a day or two and then I’m going back.” 

Back where, he wants to ask. She’s no longer in Romania. She hasn’t been for a long time now. He had gone to look when she never returned, but after Charlie no longer needed the help, she had moved onto somewhere else. Somewhere without George.

She never even sent him a letter, explaining where she had been or that she had left Charlie’s. 

Charlie looked at him with pity, and George looked back on him with fury. He had been so certain Charlie knew something that he wasn’t letting onto. That he had been keeping something from him. 

Charlie and Harry had spent so much time together and had gotten closer. Surely Charlie knew where she had disappeared to. 

But he didn’t. Harry had left early in the morning before Charlie woke, leaving only a note behind.

And George knew deep down Charlie would never lie to him. 

“Everyone will be happy to see you,” he says. He doesn’t sound like himself. Autopilot George, the one who gets him through everyday, has taken over and is calm and put together in this moment. 

“You think so?” she asks, showing the first real sign of anything like worry. 

“Of course. Ron especially.” 

“It’ll be so weird to see him. I’ve only heard from him in letters. I wonder if he’s taller.” 

_How could you write to him but not to me? Not even to break up with me properly. You just left me wondering until all hope was crushed._

“You know how Ron is,” Autopilot George jokes while the real one is falling apart on the inside. “His pants never fit properly so it always makes him look taller than what he actually is.”

Harry laughs so hard at this that she snorts, a hand flying up to cover her mouth in embarrassment, and the real George breaks through in the moment to smile softly at her, a blush tinting his cheeks. 

He is still weak for her after all this time. 

He isn’t sure how to feel about it.

“Are you hungry?” he asks before he can register that he’s doing it. He shouldn’t be surprised that he’s reverted back into attempting to feed her, considering that was all he did those few months together. 

He has to stop himself from taking a step closer to her. From drifting into the pull she has on him right now. 

“Starving,” she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. 

\-- 

The Three Broomsticks is relatively dead, but George doesn’t miss the way Harry immediately puts her hood back up as they enter. 

He wonders how much attention she’s used to receiving wherever she goes. He hasn’t seen any of the papers reporting on her whereabouts since directly after the war when she dropped off the planet. It had been almost like she was untrackable, so they gave up. 

Maybe she just doesn’t want to be seen now. 

“What do you want?” George asks her, making sure to keep his voice down because he thinks that’s what she wants. “It’s on me.”

He sees her eyes widen from underneath her cloak, so bright now that they’re shining even under the hood. He wonders when they got their sparkle back. A pang of bitter jealousy passes through him when he realizes that he didn’t help in putting it back. 

“Oh — I can get my own. You don’t have to do that.”

“Potter,” he huffs. “Just let me buy your dinner.” 

The line is moving closer to the front, and Harry must realize that she’s out of time to argue because she gives up much faster than he’s used to. He almost misses a drawn out argument with her. 

“The chicken platter and a Firewhiskey,” she says, smiling. 

_Your usual then,_ he thinks to himself. _Or at least it was back then._

George places their orders like he did when they were together, fighting the small panic attack down as he does so. It’s a sickening feeling of déjà vu. If Rosmerta notices Harry, she doesn’t say anything though she gives the pair of them a kind, slightly watery smile. 

They move to the back of the pub, clutching their drinks tightly, and George is starting to think he’s going to need more than just this sole Firewhiskey to get through this meal. 

Maybe he had been brash about inviting Harry for dinner. He’s barely functioning as it is. What made him think he could somehow get through a whole meal with his ex-girlfriend who never really took the time to break up with him properly?

Who just left. 

Who is acting like nothing ever happened between them. 

It’s so awkward, and George isn’t certain what topics of conversation are off the table.

“Can you believe Ron and Hermione are finally getting married?” George asks, settling for neutral ground once they’re seated. 

He immediately regrets it, a locked away memory flooding back to him in that instant. 

_Remember when I asked you to marry me, and you turned me down?_

He wonders if Harry’s thinking about it too. He knows he has no reason to be angry about it. She had every right to say no, and he hadn’t asked her properly. Not really. Not the way he always thought he would, at least.

“I can’t believe they waited this long,” she says, cutting through his thoughts. Maybe she’s _not_ thinking about it. “I bet she’s driving him crazy planning the wedding.” 

“I bet _he’s_ driving _her_ crazy by offering to help.” 

“All I can picture is Ron asking to help, and then asking her what he should be doing over and over. Like back in school when Hermione would help us with our homework.” 

It feels too normal, this bantering. As if there isn’t this great chasm of space between them from the past four years. 

“I wonder when they’ll have the wedding,” he ponders, looking down at his Firewhiskey because it’s easier. 

_I wonder if you’ll come back for that too._

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Harry says. “I wonder if — if they’ll be okay with me being there.”

This causes George to look up in surprise, eyebrows raised. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“I’ve been gone for so long. It’s almost like I wonder if I’m intruding in some way.”

George watches as Harry shifts uncomfortably underneath his stare, and it’s like he can’t bring himself to look away when he knows he has that sort of effect on her. He doesn’t think they’re just talking about the engagement party anymore. 

“I don’t think you could ever intrude. You guys were a part of something for so long, it’s almost like they’re unbalanced without you.”

It feels odd to be talking about her leaving this way. He had pictured in his head so many times this exact conversation, but never in this way. Never dancing around the subject. _You left me too,_ he wants to tell her. _You left me first. You left me in a way you never left them._

When he pictured this conversation before, he always imagined her saying there was some sort of misunderstanding. That she had written him and the letters had gotten lost. That she had been obliviated and lost all her memories of him or something. She would produce any obscure excuse for leaving, because it made more sense than her just disappearing. That _of course_ she loved him. That of course she wanted to be with him, and please, please would he take her back. She would do _anything_ for him to take her back. She would beg him for forgiveness, the Harry in his head. He’s heard a thousand different apologies over the years that he’s fantasized about in his own mind. 

He’s always accepted every single one. 

But this…

This is not how he pictured the first conversation he had with her since she left going. 

It’s like he’s walking a tightrope, and any misstep will cause him to fall. 

Harry shakes her head, her curls moving with her. “It’s the other way around. I’m the one unbalanced without them.”

_And I’m unbalanced without you. I’m off kilter without you._

He swallows the thought down with a bit of Firewhiskey. 

“I don’t know about that,” he tells her. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled when you show up tomorrow. I’m not even sure I’m going, to be honest.”

Harry starts at this, her eyes moving up and down his figure. He wonders what she sees. If she thinks he’s just as pathetic as everyone else does. 

“Why not?” 

“Not really my sort of thing. Don’t think I’d enjoy it.”

“But Ron is your brother!” Harry protests. “You have to go.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” he says a bit too roughly. His knuckles whiten around his glass. “Why on earth would you think I’d enjoy an engagement party?”

_Especially after you shot me down. Why would I subject myself to something like that?_

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes quickly. “You’re right. I don’t know -- it’s not my place to assume something like that. You shouldn’t go if it’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

The sinking feeling that he’s a real arsehole settles in around him. He’s never spoken to Harry like that. Even when he had been frustrated with her for not telling him where she was going with Dumbledore’s secret mission for her. Even when she took Ron and Hermione, but not him. 

“No...don’t apologize,” he says, sighing. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. It’s not like -”

_It’s not like you’ve been around lately to know me,_ he nearly says. The words are on the tip of his tongue, but disrupted when Rosmerta appears with their food. He’s both thankful and irritated by her disruption. 

“Here you go, dears,” she says, resting a hand on George’s shoulder before she walks away. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

He watches as Harry’s eyes widen with delight as she takes in her food just the way they used to when they were together, and he would take her on dates. They’ve eaten countless meals at The Three Broomsticks, but this is the first where they aren’t together. 

Back then he would tease Harry over a lot of things, but never food. He knew her eating habits and shocked face every time she took in a full plate stemmed from years of not being fed enough with the Dursleys. 

He wonders if she’s taking care of herself now, and eating enough. 

He doesn’t feel like he has the right to ask. 

“I’m starving,” she says as if she’s heard inside his head. “I haven’t eaten all day.” 

“That’s not good,” he comments, trying to keep his tone neutral. She never liked his fussing over her eating habits before. She most likely wouldn’t like it now. 

“I know, I know,” she says, digging into the side salad. “I need to do better.” 

George crams a bit of his own meal in his mouth to stop and smart mouthed retort. He spent so much of his time after the war feeding her, taking care of her. Trying to get her back on her feet. Trying to make sure she was okay. He feels an anger he didn’t expect when she talks so casually about eating. 

_I fed you everyday. I made sure you ate. Who is doing that for you now?_

“Mmmph,” Harry hums happily, and George looks up at that moment to watch that absolutely obscene way in which she savors the food on her fork. 

He looks back down quickly, blushing. 

He’s got too many emotions running through him right now, and he feels as if he’s got whiplash. 

Trust him to find something so simple as Harry eating to remind him that he’s a man. A man who had her naked in his bed years ago. A man whose body is responding to her in ways it hasn’t in a long time. 

He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable. 

“So,” she says, and he wonders if she’s noticed. She’s too busy carefully selecting her next bite to really do so, he wagers. “How have you been?” 

They’ve settled into small talk, apparently. When there’s so much to avoid in conversation, what else is there to talk about?

“Fine,” he answers, shrugging. Autopilot George is shutting down now. Even he is tired.

“Ron said in one of his letters that you guys opened a second location in Hogsmeade.” 

Ah. So maybe it _isn’t_ small talk. 

She’s looking at him a bit shyly from behind her lashes. 

“We did,” he says. “Last year.” 

“Well, that’s great! Right? You guys are really living your dream. I’m so happy for you. For both of you.” 

_What do you know about dreams? The shop was never my dream. You were._

“Yeah, it’s… it’s great. Just great. Fred manages the one in Diagon Alley, and I handled Hogsmeade.” 

Harry considers this, head tilted. “Is that part hard? Being separated from each other?” 

_Not when you have a lot of practice being separated from the ones you love, it isn’t._

“No, we still have to see each other a lot. Investment meetings, product designs and meetings for that. It takes up a lot of time, the shop.” 

_It fills the void you left._

“I’m so proud of you,” Harry says, sounding like she means it. “You’re really doing it. You’ve really made something of yourself.” 

George stares back at her then, unable to speak. There’s so much going through his head, and he can’t seem to say any of it. 

_Can't you see,_ he wants to tell her. _I haven’t made anything of myself. I’m nothing but a pile of ash. You’ve destroyed me._

—

Dinner ends with a bit of awkwardness. 

George isn’t certain if he should be heading back to his flat. Actually, he is sure. He absolutely _should_ be doing that, but every step he takes with Harry in the opposite direction, every moment she doesn’t tell him she needs to go, feels like a respite. 

There’s room for him to breathe in this space of calm uncertainty. Harry isn’t pushing him away, and is talking to him animatedly about something he can’t quite grasp because he’s so focused on the way she’s talking. 

When she left, he hadn’t seen her smile since his brother’s wedding. Now it’s like the damn thing is threatening to split her face in two. 

He wants to stay here in the sunshine of it all. He wants this to be the new memory he has of her for the rest of his life, instead of the looming thunderheads that are deeply etched in his mind now whenever he thinks of her. 

“I dressed as Leia that Halloween,” she’s telling him, grinning, when he finally manages to tune in. His mind drifts to a Harry in Leia attire without his permission. He blushes. “Do you remember when we saw that movie?”

“I remember,” he says softly. “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

“Mine too,” Harry says, sighing. It’s such a pretty sound. “It was the first movie I’ve ever been to.”

“Have you been to any since?” he asks, allowing himself this one indulgence. 

She shakes her head. “No, but I’ve always wanted to go back. I’ve just never had the time.”

“Me either. I always assumed…”

_I always assumed I’d go back with you. Eventually. After everything._

“Do you want to go now?” 

George stops walking. “What?”

“Do you want to go to a movie with me?” she asks again, kicking something nonexistent on the ground. 

“Why?” he hears himself ask. He wants to kick himself a second later. This is everything he’s ever wanted. The universe is extending him an olive branch, and he’s too stupid to grab onto it. 

“Well, the night is still young and I don’t have anything else to do, and I just thought — you know, if you wanted…”

She’s shy around him now. She’s never been shy around him before. Even before they dated, she never spoke to him like this. Like she’s afraid he’s going to shoot her down. 

Like he has the sort of power. 

She doesn't know the extent in which he’s weak for her. He doesn’t think she’s ever really fully realized it.

“Okay,” he says.

She blinks at him. Bright emerald eyes. Pretty as a fairytail character. His long lost princess. 

“Okay?” 

“I can do a movie.”

She beams at him, and he feels the first crack in the wall. 


	3. Hit the Ground

_ But man I thought I could fly, and when I hit the ground, it made a messed up sound. _

\--

_ George felt the clock ticking on his time with Harry.  _

_ It felt like a noose around his neck, tightening with every passing moment. It wasn’t as if she were becoming more withdrawn from him. On the contrary, he often found himself pulled into an abandoned room or closest at the Burrow and snogged senseless. As if she were trying to memorize the way their lips meshed together. As if she were trying to give herself enough to live on whenever she left to do...whatever it was Dumbledore asked of her. He still wasn’t sure.  _

_ The snogging was enough to distract him momentarily from the noose during those times. Her hands grazing his neck and tugging at the hair on his head took the place of the figurative rope. He leaned into her touch in those moments, allowing them to take away the sting of reality. Allowing himself to feel like they were a normal couple, doing a normal thing like kissing in a closet, and hoping that his parents didn’t walk in at any moment.  _

_ He kissed her like she had the ability to make him fly.  _

_ He actually felt like he was flying, the way his heart would pound similarly to when he’d fly his broom. _

_ But he hit the ground soon after the Minister showed up to the Burrow.  _

_ The original thought had been that Scrimgeour had suspected that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were planning on dropping out of Hogwarts. That he was here to stop it. To attempt to convince them to go back. _

_ George had paced around the kitchen while the Minister spoke with the trio, unable to calm himself enough to join everyone else at the dinner tables in the garden for Harry’s birthday. His father remained with him, giving him fretting looks. They were both concerned. Both unable to do anything about whatever it was Harry and the others were planning. Unable to listen in on the current conversation she was having with the Minister. _

_ They had stood there as patiently as they could until the moment they heard the sound of raised voices. Immediately recognizing one of them as Harry’s, George flew into the sitting room, seeing Scrimgeour standing there with his wand rounded on her and instinctively putting himself between them.  _

_ “What the hell is going on,” he growled, pushing Harry behind him further with one arm.  _

_ The Minister blinked, seemingly having forgotten where he was and what he was doing.  _

_ “Forgive me,” he said, looking ashamed. He pocketed his wand. He cleared his throat, looking at Harry again. “I’m merely asking you to reconsider. What the ministry wants...what I want...it’s the same thing that you and Dumbledore want. We should be working together.”  _

_ “And I already told you that I don’t agree with the ministry's methods,” Harry spat, her right hand fisting into the back of George’s shirt. The same hand with the words  _ I must not tell lies  _ scarred across it.  _

_ “I think you should leave,” George said roughly. If he had fangs they would be bared.  _

_ “I agree,” Ron said, and George noticed for the first time that his brother had his own wand raised. _

_ They watched together as the Minister’s expression hardened, and he limped out of the door. George’s dad followed close behind, calling a second later that he had gone.  _

_ “What was that?” George asked, spinning around to take Harry in his arms. He looked her over, finding that Scrimgeour had burnt a hole in her shirt with his wand. George felt rage bubbling up inside of him.  _

_ “Don’t. He’s not worth it,” Harry told him, reading his mind. He would surely get arrested if he did anything to the Minister. “He wanted to give us the things Dumbledore left us. The contents of his will.” _

_ “Dumbledore’s will,” George repeated. “Wha—” _

_ Harry shook her head, taking him by the hand. “No time,” she said. “Birthday dinner, remember?” _

_ Harry led him to the garden, and George allowed the distraction of her birthday celebration to overtake him. It wasn’t until later that night when everyone else was tucked up in bed that he found a moment alone with Harry.  _

_ George stumbled into the kitchen, unable to sleep, only to find that Harry had beaten him downstairs, sipping from a mug of something warm.  _

_ “Hey,” she greeted once she saw him, her eyes brightening in the way they always seemed to do around him then.  _

_ “Hey,” he said back, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “Couldn’t sleep?” _

_ “No,” she admitted. “Big day tomorrow. Wedding and all.” _

_ “Hmm,” George hummed, grabbing a Firewhiskey and sitting across from her. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the reason you can’t sleep.” _

_ “You know me too well,” she said, placing her chin in her hand and looking at him. “Have I ever told you that?” _

_ “Several times, I believe.” _

_ “Well, it’s eerie sometimes, I have to admit. No one knows me like you do.” _

_ “I just pay attention more than anyone else,” he said. “It’s like I have tunnel vision when it comes to you.” _

_ She smirked. “Is that so?” _

_ “Yep. I can’t see past you. That’s why I know you’re not awake because of the wedding. You’re awake fretting over whatever it is Dumbledore’s asked you to do, and I’d bet money on the fact that whatever Scrimgeour gave you has something to do with this secret mission that you won’t tell me about.” _

_ The smirk immediately dropped from her face. Another thing George was good at doing… calling Harry out on her bullshit when no one else would.  _

_ “How did you —“  _

_ “Come on, Harry. I’m not stupid. When you’re not trying to distract yourself with me in a cleaning closet, you’re distracting yourself with your plotting. Everyone knows you three are planning on leaving. You’re not going to Hogwarts, but you’re going somewhere. Why can’t you just tell me?” _

_ “It’s not — it’s not that simple. Dumbledore trusted me with this information. I have to be careful.” _

_ “So you don’t trust me, is that it?” _

_ “No,” Harry said forcefully. “I trust you more than I trust anyone.” _

_ George ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Then why can’t you just tell me?”  _

_ “Don’t you see,” Harry said, wide green eyes imploring him to understand. “It’s because I trust you that I can’t tell you. Our relationship...it’s not a secret. The whole world knows about it. If Voldemort...if he knew what I was doing...what Dumbledore is asking me to do…”  _

_ “I don’t care about Voldemort,” George said, banging his fist on the table. “I don’t care about Dumbledore either. I care about you! It’s always you! You’re going to end up getting yourself killed, and you won’t let me stop you! That’s why you’re not telling me! Because you fully expect to die during this war. You think that’s your role in it, and you don’t want to let me close enough to stop you!” _

_ Harry looked at George somberly, and he knew he had hit the nail over the head. He had been so afraid to say those words aloud as if saying them would ring them true. Now he had just shouted them at her.  _

_ “I don’t know what my future will hold,” Harry started slowly, looking down at her cup clutched in her hands. “I don’t know if I’ll make it out alive. I hope I do. I want to. But I also know that sometimes sacrifices have to be made --” _

_ “Don’t talk like that,” George said, cutting her off. “You’re not...you’re not a chess piece, Harriet! You’re a person. You’re  _ my _ person. I’m not willing to sacrifice you!” _

_ Harry smiled at him sadly. “Which is exactly why I can’t take you with me on this.” _

_ “Don’t go,” George begged. Pleaded. He wasn’t above such things when it came to her. “Please don’t go. Stay with me. I’ll do everything I can to protect you. We’ll run away if we have to. I can’t — I can’t let this war have you.” _

_ “Don’t you see. The war doesn’t have me. You do. You’ve always had me. You own me.” _

_ “Then let me keep you,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out something that had been weighing it down for months now. He slid the little ring box across the table to her, watching as she looked at it with wide eyes and parted lips.  _

_ “What is that?” she asked softly, not making a move for it.  _

_ “You know exactly what it is. I want you to marry me, Potter. I was hoping to have a bit more time to ask you. I was hoping to have a better way to ask you, but you’re not allowing me time to figure it out.” _

_ He was aware in the back of his mind that he was presenting her the ring as a sort of ultimatum. That, by offering it to her, he was hoping she would choose him over the war. He also knew that he should never put Harry in the position of having to make such a choice, but he was going mad with the thought of losing her.  _

_ “Please take it back,” she whispered, her face white. “Please...I can’t.” _

_ “Don’t you want to at least open it?” _

_ “If I open it, I'm going to say yes,” she said, standing so quickly that her chair flew backwards. “I’m seventeen, George! I’m not ready for this type of question! This type of commitment!”  _

_ “But you’re ready to go into a war,” he shouted back, standing too. They rounded on each other, fists clenched. “You’re ready to commit to possibly dying! To going on a suicide mission!” _

_ “Don’t,” she hissed, jabbing a finger at him threateningly. “Don’t you dare start with that again!” _

_ “Do I mean so little to you that you won’t even give this a thought?” he asked, gesturing towards the ring angrily. “Do I mean nothing to you?” _

_ “You mean everything to me!” Harry shouted at him. “Everything! That’s why I can’t say yes! That’s why I can't bring you with me on this mission! That’s why — that’s why…” _

_ She collapsed then, and George came back into his right mind to see what he had done to her. The way she had crumbled, the way she was sobbing uncontrollably, it was all because of him.  _

_ “Harry,” he said much softer than before. He hopped across the table, hearing his mother’s scolding voice inside his head for doing so and bent down to her crumpled form. “Harry, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what just came over me.” _

_ “You mean...everything,” Harry sobbed, throwing herself into his lap with such force that his head smacked against the wall behind them. “Everything! Don’t you dare say otherwise. I love you so much, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to protect you.” _

_ Including dying for him, he understood in that moment. She wasn’t going along with it like a duty, but because she felt trapped in it. As if she had no other way. He understood the maddening sort of love that would possess a person to do such things.  _

_ “I feel the same about you,” he said, rubbing her back. “I would do anything to keep you safe. Including locking you away, and hiding you until all of this is over.” _

_ “But we...we can’t do that,” she said, tears still coming. “We can’t just hide.” _

_ George swallowed. “Let’s make a deal then. I won’t ask you to run away with me. I won’t try to hide you. So long as you try your best to stay alive. To come back to me after all of this is over.” _

_ Harry sniffled a bit, trying to collect herself before answering, and George knew she was considering any loopholes she could find.  _

_ “I’ll try my best to come back to you,” she said after a moment. She nuzzled her head into his chest. “I’ll always try my best to come back to you.”  _

_ “Good,” he said, tilting her chin up with two fingers to look at her. “I love you. You know that right? I love you so much I think I might be going mad from it.”  _

_ “I love you too,” she answered without restraint. “And I’m sorry I can’t say yes to you right now, but please….ask me to marry you again later. I promise I’ll say yes later. After all of this is over.” _

_ George smiled before bending down to place a kiss to her lips. He would wait forever for her if he had to. She was worth it. _

— 

The cinema is relatively dead for a weekend night. 

Or, at least, George assumes so. Admittedly, he doesn’t know much about muggle cinemas save for the one time he went with Harry years ago. He feels a bit odd when a boy younger than him with a broken out face takes their ticket and snack order though. 

_ Is this what it feels like to get older? When did this happen to me?  _

“You’ve gotta stop paying for me,” Harry huffs, taking a sip of her soda a moment later and making the most delighted face. 

George chuckles. “Still easily distracted, I see.”

“What?” 

“Nothing, nothing.” 

He opens the door to their theater, finding it just as deserted as the rest of the place. He wonders if they've chosen a movie that’s been out for awhile. Neither one of them knew a thing about the movies being shown, so they chose one based on the most interesting poster. The thought of being isolated in a theater room with Harry feels an odd mix of exhilarating and slightly suffocating. 

He resists the urge to reach back and grab her hand to guide her through the dark room. 

_ “Love Actually,”  _ Harry says, reading the ticket after they’re seated. “Do you think it will be good?” 

“I dunno,” he admits. “Probably won’t come anywhere close to touching  _ Star Wars.”  _

“You’ve still got a crush on Han, I see,” Harry says, smiling at him. It’s so bright. Even in this dark space. 

There’s not enough room in a cinema seat to provide the illusion of space between two people who used to date, but are now pretending as if that bit of history never happened, he decides. 

He shifts uncomfortably, hoping she doesn’t notice.

A few more people trickle in, sitting far enough away for George to feel comfortable. It’s like they’re not the only two people on the planet anymore. 

“Han is an attractive bloke,” George attempts to joke. He realizes how long it’s been since he’s joked around when it lands funny. He’s rusty. 

Harry either doesn’t notice or chooses not to call any attention to it. Instead she snorts into her drink, the air she blows through her straw making her soda bubble. 

“It’s so weird to be back here,” Harry says. “I thought it was odd to come back home, but being back in the Muggle world… It’s just odd, I guess.”

“You haven’t been living as a Muggle?”

As soon as George asks it, he wonders if he’s crossed some line. He doesn’t know if he’s privy to such information. There’s Harry before the war, during the war, and those first few months after the war when she was recuperating at the Burrow. He knows that Harry. He knows her as well as he knows himself. But he knows so little of Harry these past four years that it’s almost like she doesn't exist. He hadn’t been allowed to know anything about her. 

She had made sure of that. 

He finds himself aching for her to answer. To give him some clue of where she’s been. Of  _ how _ she’s been. He used to know everything about her, and now he feels like he knows nothing. 

“I’ve kind of just been floating around,” she admits easily. “I’ve had a foot in both worlds. Mostly I’ve been living as a muggle though, and working odd muggle jobs after I left Charlie’s. But it’s odd to come back to where everything started. We’re so close to where I grew up.”

It's odd to hear her admit that she left his brother’s house. That she had existed there, and decided to carry her existence elsewhere without telling anyone. It’s not as if it’s some big secret, but she had gone to such lengths to not be found, he wonders how she can talk about it so casually right now. 

“I actually stayed with Dudley for a couple months,” she continues, twirling her straw. Maybe it is hard for her to talk about, but she keeps on. “I enrolled in some Muggle community college classes, and worked a few odd jobs for a bit. He let me stay with him while I did that.” 

George turns to look at her fully, surprised. He isn’t sure what to address first. The fact that she lived with her cousin, or the fact that she attended a Muggle school after everything like she’s normal. As though she isn’t a witch. 

She carried on living as if everything was completely normal, and George has been stuck in the same brand of hell for the past few years. 

“You kept in touch with your cousin?” he asks. His voice betrays how deep he’s spiraling. 

“Yeah. He’s getting married too, actually. Next month. To a really nice girl.”

George doesn’t give a shit about any of that. Not about her cousin or his love life. How could she go out of her way to get in contact with him when she hasn’t spoken a word to him before tonight in four fucking years? The last he heard, she had cut off all contact with the Dursleys. 

Now this?

He closes his eyes and leans back in his seat. 

“What about the rest of your family?” 

“I haven't seen my aunt and uncle since they left Privet Drive,” she says. He isn’t sure if he should count this as a win. His heart doesn’t sink any further when she tells him, so perhaps it counts for something. 

“Dudley doesn’t live with them anymore?”

Harry shakes her head. “Nope. Surprising, isn’t it? It’s a wonder Aunt Petunia let him leave. I bet she sobbed when he moved out. From what I know, he doesn’t see very much of them anymore. He’s living his own life. He’s doing really well.”

“Fantastic,” George says sarcastically. 

His tone isn’t lost on Harry as she smiles at him ruefully. 

“I know you don’t really care for him --”

“I don’t care for him at all. Let’s drop this conversation.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying --”

“Harriet, I don’t care about your cousin,” George says a bit too loudly. He doesn’t look to see if any of the other patrons are paying attention to them. “I don’t know him now. I don’t know a thing about what he’s like now. But what I do remember is the chubby boy who made you so unhappy as a kid. The one who bullied you and made you miserable. And that’s all I care to know about.”

“Okay,” Harry says, deciding not to push him apparently. 

He’s thankful when the screen lights up and the lights around them go down, and he can try to forget everything for the next two hours. 

\--

_ Love Actually _ had been a horrible choice of a film. 

He should have known just from seeing the word  _ love _ printed on the poster that he wouldn’t want to watch a movie about several different couples falling in love all while sitting next to his ex-girlfriend that he’s still hung up over. 

How could he be so stupid?

_ “Star Wars  _ was definitely better,” Harry agrees afterwards, trotting to keep up with him down the sidewalk. He isn’t sure where he’s going, but she’s following along. 

“That film was shit,” he grumbles. “No one got slashed with a lightsaber or anything.”

“It wasn’t  _ that  _ bad. I thought parts of it were even funny.”

“You’ve always had a twisted sense of humor.”

“We should do something else,” she says, jumping in front of him so he’s forced to stop and look at her. He wishes she wouldn’t. “Something fun. So this night doesn’t end on a sour note.”

George blinks at this, curious over her trying so hard. Why does she bother? What is she getting out of spending time with him? 

“Yeah. Like what?”

“We should…” She trails off in thought before her eyes turn bright. He has to look down. “We should go swimming!”

“Harriet,” George sighs. “It’s November.”

“So?”

“So,” he repeats, gesturing at his breath fogging in the air. “It’s cold! Way too cold to swim.”

“You act like we don’t have these magical things called  _ wands,”  _ she says, twirling hers casually. “We can charm the water warm.”

George rolls his eyes. “Put that away,” he says, pushing her hand down. His own hand flexes when he drops it back down to his side. “People are going to see.”

Harry grins at him, daringly. “Oh, come  _ on.  _ You sound like Moody! They probably just think it’s a stick or something.”

“Because there’s nothing odd about a girl twirling a stick around.”

“Come on, George,” she says, bouncing up to him. He has to try very hard not to smile. He wants to be annoyed just a bit longer, but it’s always so hard around her. “Let’s go swimming! I’ve gotten really good at it.”

“You’ve gotten good at  _ swimming,”  _ he says, narrowing his eyes at her. “I don’t believe you, considering the time I found you sitting on the bottom of a pool.”

“Let me show you then,” she says. “I know I’ll impress you.”

“You don’t have to show me you can swim now to impress me,” he tells her without thinking. He watches the blush tint her cheek as a reward for his boldness. “You’ve done that plenty of times without swimming being involved.”

“But I  _ want t _ o impress you,” she says softly. He looks into her eyes and can’t find the strength to look away. “Just once more.” 

He realizes then that he still can’t deny her anything.

\--

_ The end, when it came, was gradual.  _

_ There weren’t enough signs to hint to it coming. At least, not unless you were looking closely. And George wasn’t. Not really.  _

_ Harry wrote to him several times a week, detailing everything from her adventures with Charlie’s dragons to new recipes she was attempting to cook. Charlie didn’t cook at all, she told him. Apparently Charlie was more hopeless than him in the kitchen. The thought made George smug.  _

_ He wrote back telling her of Fred finally coming home from the hospital and having to use a cane to get around for a while. He told her of the various ways he joked about his brother being an old man. He told her of Ron and Hermione returning to Hogwarts along with Ginny. He told her of their plans to reopen the shop.  _

_ Most of all he told her that he loved her. That he loved her more than anything, and he couldn’t wait for her to come home.  _

_ They carried on like that for a few weeks before the letters started getting more and more staggered on her end. There would be long bouts of silence where George’s owl would return with no word from her, and when she did write back it was always to apologize for being so busy.  _

One of the more vicious dragons recently had eggs, _ she would tell him. _ I got my writing hand burnt trying to check on her. 

_ It all made sense. He knew the job was dangerous. But there was something in the tone of her letters that made him nervous. She never elaborated past why she couldn’t talk more. She never told him how she was, or that she missed him. Her letters were becoming littered with excuses.  _

_ His own letters started to become more urgent. Pleading.  _

Are you alright?  _ he’d ask her.  _ Why aren’t you writing? Is everything okay? Are we okay? 

_ Her letters started becoming even more scarce after that until eventually they just stopped altogether. _

_ George waited two weeks without any word from her before he went to Romania himself, showing up on Charlie’s doorstep unexpectedly.  _

_ “She isn’t here,” Charlie told him. George couldn’t forget the way he looked at George like he should have known that. “She hasn’t been here for a month now.”  _

_ George hadn’t believed him at first, tearing past him and going to the spare room where Harry had stayed to see for himself. The room was empty. Bare. Everything he had helped her carry just months before was now cleared out.  _

_ She was gone. _

_ George returned back home without Harry and uncertain of their relationship status. _

_ Was there even a relationship if the person on the other side wasn’t responding? _

_ He wasn’t sure.  _

_ It took two more months before he realized she wasn’t coming back. Not back home and not back to him. That she had left him. It was like a sucker punch to the gut every morning he had to wake up and remember all over again that she was gone.  _

_ Eventually he just stopped sleeping on a normal schedule.  _

_ Acceptance and attachment are two different things though, and while he could accept that Harry was gone and their relationship was over, he couldn’t sever his attachment to the memories she had left behind. He saw her everywhere. In his bed where they had made love several times. In the scarf she had given him for Christmas. When he closed his eyes, he saw Harry’s staring back at him.  _

_ It was like living with a ghost, and he wanted nothing more than for her to haunt him.  _

_ It was all he had left of her, and when you don’t have much of someone you cling to what you get.  _

_ And so when another year went by and his owl dropped off the morning paper and he looked down to see Harry’s Firebolt staring back at him, he felt the earth spin from under him.  _

_ He quickly skimmed the article, finding that she was apparently donating her broom to charity to help with post war relief funds. The article didn’t provide any information about where she was or even any quotes from her, but it gave George hope in the ebony wood silhouette on the Prophet’s front page.  _

_ The next week he outbid every other person for the broom, draining his savings account in the process. _


	4. Pouring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got anxious about uploading this again. That's why it took so long. Sorry about that!

**Chapter Four: Pouring**

_ Oh I tried running from the memory and the mourning, but the penalty kept on pouring. _

“Here, take my hand.”

George looks at the outstretched hand in front of him, eyeing it like he’s never seen it before. Like he’s never held that same hand through countless seasons in his life. His brain suddenly shuts off, and he isn’t sure how to reach out and take it. 

“Come on,” Harry tries again, latching onto his hand herself. He watches how she intertwines their fingers with ease. How she doesn’t even flinch when she does this. George himself nearly jumps out of his skin. 

“Where are we even going to find a pool to swim in right now?” he asks, his voice coming out more normal sounding than he expects it to. 

Harry rolls her eyes. “I know exactly where. Now, if you’re done doubting me, I’d be happy to take us there.”

“You’re going to apparate us,” George says, reaching up to point to her with their still clasped hands. “ _ You,  _ Harriet Potter who has balance issues.”

“I do  _ not _ have balance issues,” Harry huffs, squaring her shoulders at him. The Harry he loved to rile up is before him again, and he resists the urge to do so. “I just...am not as coordinated as most people.”

George can’t stop his lips from quirking upwards. 

“Stop,” Harry tells him, spotting it. 

George blinks at her innocently. “Stop what?”

“You know exactly what!” 

“I assure you, I haven’t the slightest clue.” 

“George.” 

“Harriet.”

They’re staring at each other now, both seemingly realizing that they’ve fallen into their easy bantering yet again. They blink at each other and then down and their still clasped hands in unison. 

“We should…”

“Go,” George finishes for her. “We should go to that pool you supposedly know about.”

Harry nods. “Right. Okay, just...if I do fall over, please don’t laugh.” 

George can’t help the puff of laughter that follows her words. “I would never.”

Harry seems to take him by his word, no matter the fact that it’s framed by laughter, and closes her eyes. George feels the familiar pull a moment later, and a second later he’s standing outside of a house. 

A house he stood in front of seven years ago.

He turns to Harry, awestruck. “Are we —“ 

“You recognize it, huh?” Harry says, dropping his hand. Pathetically, he reaches after her as she goes but her back is to him so she doesn’t notice. “The Welborn’s old house. The pool down the street from my aunt and uncle’s old house.” 

Sure enough when George turns his head to the left, he can spot the old house down the street. It appears to have new residents now. He can make out a car parked in the driveway and the light to the sitting room is on. 

He turns back, seeing Harry opening the gate for him that leads to the pool. 

“But how — won’t they care that we’re here?” 

Harry shakes her head. “They don’t live here anymore. Mr. Welborn passed away two years ago, and Mrs. Welborn lives with her daughter now.” 

George is still rooted to the ground. 

“Someone lives here though,” he says, gesturing towards the front porch where some potted flowers decorate the steps. 

“Oh, um, I do actually,” Harry says shyly. “I live here.” 

George is certain he must have misheard. There’s no way Harry could have been so close this entire time, and he never knew. There’s no way she would have been so close by, and never told him. 

Right? 

But it all makes sense. He had looked everywhere he could think of, assuming that she had gone somewhere far away. 

But she hadn’t. 

She had been here, on Privet Drive. The one place he never thought to look. This whole time, she had been within arms reach and no one knew. 

“You’ve been here this whole time,” he says, finding his voice. There’s fury behind it. “This whole fucking time, everyone has been worried about you.  _ I’ve  _ been worried about you! And you’ve been here?”

“George, please —“

“And what about Grimmauld? You told me that’s where you were staying? Did you lie about that too?” 

“I didn’t know how to tell you about where I was actually living! Grimmauld — it just seemed easier at the time!” 

“To lie?” George presses. “It was just easier to lie to me, because that’s what you’ve been doing this whole time, isn’t it?”

“It’s — it’s not like that.” 

“Then what is it like, Harriet? Please, fucking explain it to me because I just do not understand.”

Harry shifts uncomfortably, looking around at what he assumes are her neighbor’s houses to make sure no one has been made aware of George’s shouting. 

“Can we — can we talk inside? Please? Where we won’t stand the chance of having an audience?” 

Whether it’s the pleading nature of her look or the fact that George wants to have this conversation, and he knows Harry will cower away from it if he doesn’t go inside, he listens, pushing past her and stomping through the sliding glass door that she’s just unlocked. 

The air feels thinner inside the house. It’s clear that someone lives here, and he can tell through the messy scattered nature of the belongings that it’s Harry. Harry, his Harry, who learned how to pick up after everyone else but herself. Harry who never had enough possessions to have a proper place for them all.

He whirls around when he hears the door shut behind him, and she’s holding her hands out in front of her like she’s trying to talk him down. Like he’s mad. He probably does look insane at this moment. 

“I know how bad this looks, okay,” she says, slowly approaching him. “I’ve been here for two years now, and haven’t told anyone. But you’ve got to understand, I didn’t know how.” 

“Two years,” George repeats. “Two  _ whole  _ years you’ve been this close? And you never once thought to floo someone and say, ‘hey, I’m home?’”

Harry looks on the verge of tears, and for the first time in his life, George doesn’t wilt under them. He doesn’t rein in his fury because for all of this time he’s been living with a ghost when he shouldn’t have. She’s been alive this whole time, and he wants her to be alive in his moment. He wants to push her to the point of tears, so that she can feel what he’s had to feel since the moment she left him. 

He wants to break her the same way she’s broken him.

“It’s not that simple,” she says, her voice wavering. “It was never that simple.”

“But it was simple to leave me? Is that it?”

“No,” Harry says quickly, forcefully. “No, you can’t think that. Nothing involving you is never simple. My feelings for you weren’t simple.”

_ Weren't.  _ The simple word hangs between them like a partition. Because of course Harry’s feelings are no longer existent. Here he stands, drowning in what he feels for her, and on the other side of the room she’s already pulled herself out. Forged herself in the fire that she set to them, and rose up from the ashes. 

She isn’t suffering anymore. She’s let him go. 

Why can’t he seem to do the same?

“I just -- I don’t get it, Harriet,” he presses. “Why didn’t you come back? To  _ me?  _ Why would you come back here?”

“I did come back,” she argues. “After the war, I came back like I promised to. I fought so hard to get back to you.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about —“

“No, but don’t you see? That’s where it all started.  I came back and didn’t know what I was doing. I had to figure out how to be myself all over again. How to be normal. How to be your girlfriend. This — this untouched person, and it was too hard, George. Something had to go.”

“So it was me, right? I was the one who had to go?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head furiously. “I was the one who had to go. I needed to get out. To disappear for a little while. It was selfish and cruel. I know that, but you wouldn’t have understood.”

“Christ, Harriet,” George hisses. “I would have tried. You never even gave me a chance.”

“I tried to talk to you. I tried so hard to tell you how I was feeling, but you — you just wouldn’t…”

She turns away from him, tugging at her hair. Tears are fully streaking down her face now, and George doesn’t want her to shield him from them. He grabs her roughly by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. 

“I what, Harriet?” he asks. “I wouldn’t what?”

“You wouldn't listen!” she shouts at him, taking him back a little. “You were so busy trying to put me back together that you didn’t listen to me! I would try countless times to tell you how I was feeling, and you were so stretched thin with everything else that you couldn’t hear me! You wanted me to be like I was before the war! And that person didn’t exist anymore! It killed me to see you looking at me like you didn’t  _ want  _ that version of me!”

“That’s not —I didn’t —“

“And I’m not blaming you or saying it’s your fault,” Harry says, cutting him off. “I know you were doing your best. You were trying to do what was right. But at the time I was...I was so mad at you.”

George’s fingertips tighten into Harry’s shoulders, but if she feels any pain she doesn’t show it. 

“You were mad at me?”

“You made me promise to come back, and then when I did, you weren’t here. Not really.”

“Of course I was here,” George says, his voice rising. “I put my entire life on hold to be there for you.”

“That’s not the same thing. You looked at me differently. You handled me like I was made of glass. Like one wrong move and I would fall apart. You stopped laughing with me, joking with me. You weren’t… you anymore.”

“I saw you  _ dead,  _ Harriet!” George says, shaking her as if that will make her understand. “It fucked with me! I looked at you, and all I could see was Hagrid carrying your lifeless body. And then when you came back, it’s like you  _ were _ dead! You acted so withdrawn. I didn’t know what to do!”

“I know you didn’t! I know! But don’t you see? You treated me like I  _ had  _ died. The way you looked at me...I  _ hated  _ it.I absolutely hated it. You were so busy trying to fix me that you left me. I know in the end, I was the one who physically left and didn’t come back, but you...you left me first, George. You weren’t there for me to come back to. I looked into your eyes and couldn’t find you.”

George thinks back to all the times he looked into Harry’s lifeless eyes after the war, and wonders now if she saw the same thing every time she looked at him. If he was every bit of a shell of a person then as she had been. 

“I know what I did was wrong,” she says, sniffling. Her head leans forward until it makes contact with his chest for the first time in four years, and George can feel his heart jolt to life with the  _ thud  _ of its weight. “I know I took the easy way out by leaving, but I didn't know how to come home. I was gone for so long that I didn’t know how to get back. I was this different person...and I was afraid…”

“Afraid of what?” he whispers, his hands too afraid to move from her shoulders. 

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me,” she wails. “I wanted to come home so badly, but I didn’t think you would want me anymore. So I ran.”

Tears are pouring from his cheeks now, and he welcomes them like a baptism. They wash over him and break the final wall he’s built like a dam. 

His girl. 

Far too noble for her own good. 

“You idiot,” he says with half a laugh. Bravery pools at his fingertips and he moves one of his hands to cradle her head deeper into his chest. “I’m always going to want you.”

\--

_ George watched in the stillness of the night as Harry slept, tracing the line of her cheek bone as he did.  _

_ He leaned down, breathing in her scent, finding it tinted with the smell of dirt and blood, but she was still here. She was real. She was alive.  _

_ She had come back to him, and he could hardly believe his luck.  _

_ The silence of post war betrayed the fact that his siblings were scattered throughout the Burrow, all sleeping, save for Fred who was at St. Mungos with their mum. George was fairly certain he was the only one awake when Harry suddenly started to shift in the bed next to him. _

_ He watched as she groaned, eyes fluttering open slowly, and his hand stilled its stroking of her cheek. Confusion etched its way across her features as she blinked into the darkness before her eyes found and settled on him.  _

_ “George?” she questioned, her voice sounding like it hadn’t been used for a while. _

_ “I’m here,” he assured her, brushing some of her fringe back to kiss her scar. “I’m right here.”  _

_ “Did I — did I do it? Did I finish everything?”  _

_ In her grogginess, she must not have remembered everything right away, he suspected. She was searching his face for some sign that she had completed her mission, whatever it was. That she had done well.  _

_ “You did,” he told her. “You did it. I’m not even sure how, but you did.”  _

_ She blinked at him. “He’s gone?”  _

_ “He’s gone. He’s really gone this time. You did so well, my brave girl.”  _

_ “I died, George. In the forest. I was dead. He killed me.” _

_ George froze, wondering if she had damaged her mind somehow during all of this. Perhaps she was still in the space between reality and a dream, and wasn’t aware of what she was saying. _

_ “Hush, darling,” he shushed her. He didn’t want to talk of her dying ever again. “He didn’t manage to kill you. I’m not sure how, but he didn’t.” _

_ She was just knocked out and thought to be dead. He was certain of it then in that moment. People don’t die and come back. Magic in all its great wonder couldn’t even accomplish such a thing.  _

_ “He — he did though,” Harry protested, trying and struggling to sit up. “I saw Dumbledore. I talked to him.”  _

_ “Don’t try to sit up,” George said, hastily pushing her back down. “You’re hurt. Whatever it was he did to you left another mark that’s likely going to scar.” _

_ He watched as she looked down at her chest, noticing for the first time that she was covered from chest to rib cage in wrappings. Pomfrey had agreed to heal her at the Burrow to keep Harry’s privacy safe, but whatever she had been hit with had been dark and had left a giant gash that sliced through where her heart was.  _

_ After it had been cleaned, George had seen it was in the shape of another lightning bolt. She would carry it with her for the rest of her life, and it would scar but it wouldn't take away from her beauty, he knew. _

_ “I’m hurt,” she repeated as if she didn’t believe it.  _

_ “You’re hurt,” George confirmed. “But you’re still alive. That’s all that matters.” _

_ She sunk back into the bed, looking up at him. It would be the last time he would remember her really seeing him directly after the war.  _

_ “I have so much to tell you,” she said, her eyes starting to droop again. “So much I want to say.”  _

_ “Rest, love,” he said, placing a kiss to the tip of her nose. “There will be plenty of time later for you to tell me everything.”  _

_ He wouldn’t realize until later that she had actually died. That she wasn’t just babbling in that moment of first consciousness. Perhaps he already knew deep down, but didn’t want to talk about it. Couldn’t find the strength to talk about it.  _

_ Whenever Harry would try to talk about it later, he would always brush it off.  _

_ She was alive.  _

_ That was all that mattered. _

  
  


— 

“I want to come home,” Harry says, sobbing into his chest. “I know that it’s selfish of me, and I know that I have no right to ask, but I...I just want to come  _ home.” _

And George realizes then that she’s not talking about Hogwarts or the Burrow. She’s not even talking about the house that they’re standing in currently that she owns and has lived in for the past two years. It’s not a place, but a person she’s meaning. 

She’s talking about  _ him.  _

That the home she’s been trying so hard to get back to is  _ him.  _

She hadn’t forgotten about him, or placed their love on a shelf to be forgotten. She loved him then, and she loves him now. She’s just been lost this whole time, unsure how to come back.

His beautiful, wonderful, absolute  _ dolt  _ of a girl.

“Then come home,” he says, cupping her face and making her look at him. “I’m right here. I’ve been waiting this entire time.”

She looks up at him like she can’t believe him. Like the words leaving his mouth couldn’t possibly be for her, and the way she tightens her fists into the front of his shirt makes him think she’s trying to anchor herself to this moment. 

To make it seem more real. 

So he does the one thing he can think of to make her realize how earnest he is. 

He kisses her. 

It’s soft at first. A simple brushing of lips together without the heat or urgency that he knows will follow in due time. They’re a bit hesitant as they test each other’s lips out again for the first time in four years. It’s like he’s having to walk her through how to kiss him again, and he’s more than happy to do so. 

_ Tilt your head just like this, and see,  _ he tells her as she groans into his mouth.  _ Remember how much you like this angle? Remember all the times I’ve kissed you like this? _

She whimpers in response, telling him that  _ yes  _ she remembers, and  _ yes  _ she still likes it. 

_ Part your lips just so as I bite down here,  _ he instructs her, nipping on her lower lip and letting it catch in his teeth. He feels the shiver down her spine through his fingers, and the puff of breath against his lips as she lets out a small pant. 

He swallows the sound of his name as he kisses her again fully, chasing it down her throat with his tongue. He’s waited four years to kiss her again, and he’s not about to let this chance go. 

She tastes like the salt from her tears and her own special mixture of cinnamon and honey, and it’s triggering something in George at that moment. It’s unlocking a thousand different memories he didn’t know he had, ones he had buried after the war of them happy because it had been too hard to remember them before. 

He sees her at sixteen, eyes wide when she realizes that he really does love her. That it hadn’t been a prank, him showing up at her aunt and uncle’s house that summer it all started. 

He’s kissing her at the train station that same year, making her promise to write and to visit him every Hogsmeade weekend. She’s telling him that she loves him, only him, and he tugs on her Gryffindor tie to pull her close enough to kiss just once then twice more.

He sees her again at seventeen, dancing with him at Bill’s wedding as he cradles her closer out of both fear and love. He sees himself realizing the moment he has to let go of her when the wedding falls under attack, and he has to trust her enough to come back. 

And then he opens his eyes and sees her now, different but somehow still the same. Her love for him not gone, but transformed into something new. Something stronger than it had ever been, and in her misunderstanding, she had fled. 

But she’s back now, clinging to him for once and he pulls away to rest his forehead against hers, breathless. 

“Is it okay?” she asks, her voice so small. “Is it okay for me to come home? Even though I took so long?”

“It’s always been okay,” he tells her, his thumb brushing along her jaw. “My love for you hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s always been here.”


	5. Where You Are

**Chapter Five: Where You Are**

_ And it got me thinking, no matter how far, I just wanted to get back to where you are.  _

—

_ George,  _

_ Romania has been wonderful. I’m really enjoying working with the dragons. There’s a particularly nasty one who isn’t that fond of me, though I’m attempting to butter her up.  _

_ Hopefully she’ll come around soon enough.  _

_ How are things on your end? Have you thought anymore about opening up the shop? _

_ All my love,  _

_ Harry  _

—

_ Harry,  _

_ I’m so happy you’re doing well and getting better. I miss you so much, but the important thing is that you’re taking care of yourself and healing.  _

_ Please don’t hurt yourself trying to woo that dragon. I’d hate to send you off to take care of yourself only to find out you’ve nearly done yourself in again.  _

_ Maybe let Charlie handle the tougher dragons.  _

_ No word on the shop yet. Fred is still adjusting to life with a cane. He hobbled around all of yesterday like an old man. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a good while.  _

_ I’m not too concerned about it. The shop comes second to you. _

_ I love you so much.  _

_ Hopefully I’ll see you soon.  _

_ George _

—

_ George,  _

_ Please don’t wait around on me to get fully better before you open up the shop. We don’t know how long that could take. I couldn’t stand it if I were the reason you were further putting your dream on hold.  _

_ It isn’t fair to you. You two had just gotten everything going, and then this war hit. _

_ Please consider it at least.  _

_ And don’t worry. Charlie is keeping me in his sights at all times.  _

_ And I him when he enters the kitchen.  _

_ Did you know he’s a worse cook than you? I think he’s trying to kill me a second time. _

_ Love,  _

_ Harry _

— 

_ Harry,  _

_ Please don’t joke about dying. It’s really not funny. You barely got out of this war with your life. I don’t even like teasing about it.  _

_ I had no idea about Charlie and his lack of cooking skills though. That’ll be conversation for our next family dinner.  _

_ I hope you’re doing well.  _

_ When do you think you’ll be up for a visit?  _

_ Love,  _

_ George _

— 

_ George, _

_ It was just a joke. I didn’t know it would upset you so much. If I can’t joke about it what else can I do? Let it swallow me up?  _

_ I’ll try to be more considerate though. _

_ I’m not sure about a visit right now. Maybe in a week or two when I’ve gotten settled with routine.  _

_ Have you thought anymore about the shop? You never answered me last time. I’m getting more concerned the longer you put it off.  _

_ All my love,  _

_ Harry  _

— 

_ Harry, _

_ I haven’t forgotten about the shop. It’s just not what’s important right now. I’m entirely focused on you for the time being, and happy that way.  _

_ The shop will still be there for me later.  _

_ Let’s just do us all a favor and never speak of you dying again. It would be a relief for me.  _

_ George  _

—

_ George,  _

_ I guess what I’m just not understanding is how you’re focusing on me while I’m here and you’re all the way back at home? It seems like you have plenty of time for the shop since I’m not around currently. _

_ I’m really starting to think you’re putting everything on hold for me, and it’s making me feel guilty. When we were in school, the shop and all the products you were working on were your passion. I just feel like you’re going to grow to resent me if you keep putting it off.  _

_ Please at least talk to Fred about it.  _

_ Anyway, I’ll stop harping on that. How are you doing? How are you REALLY doing?  _

_ I’ve been having a hard time as of late. I’m having a lot of nightmares which Charlie says is normal after what I’ve gone through. He wants me to speak to someone. A therapist or something.  _

_ What do you think?  _

_ I guess it couldn’t hurt.  _

_ I love and miss you,  _

_ Harry  _

—

_ Harry, _

_ We are set to reopen the shop next week. Thought you’d be happy about that.  _

_ Maybe you can come down for the opening?  _

_ I’m starting to get jealous of Charlie. He gets to see you all the time.  _

_ George  _

— 

_ George,  _

_ I’m not sure if the last letter you sent me was in response to my letter asking how you were? Maybe you never got it. I don’t entirely trust Charlie’s owl. I think he’s been singed one too many times. _

_ You never mention how you’re doing in any of your letters. Please let me know.  _

_ I don’t think I can make it for opening weekend. I’ve got my first meeting with my therapist. Charlie says you’ll understand since it’s so important. _

_ Harry _

—

_ Harry,  _

_ I’m fine. More than fine. I’m perfect.  _

_ I’m happy you and Charlie seem to be getting so close. _

_ I guess whenever you’re ready to see me just let me know. _

_ George _

—

_ George,  _

_ Why are you being so short with me? What did I do?  _

_ Why can you never seem to respond when I’m asking you how you’re doing? _

_ I’ve started therapy this week. It is both extremely rewarding and extremely hard. I feel like I’m unlocking so much of myself that I’ve kept buried.  _

_ I’d love to talk to you about it sometime. _

_ Maybe you should look into it too? We’ve both been through so much. _

_ Harry _

— 

_ Harry,  _

_ I don’t need therapy.  _

_ Opening weekend was great. Fantastic. We sold out of nearly everything.  _

_ Let me know if you ever have time to see me again.  _

_ George _

—

_ George,  _

_ Why are you being so short— _

_ George, _

_ What has gotten into you — _

_ George,  _

_ You’ve never spoken to me like this —  _

_ George,  _

_ Can you not hear me? Do you not even care? _

  
  


_ George, _

_ Sorry I haven’t responded in a while. One of the nastier dragons had eggs and I pissed her off trying to check on them. I burnt my writing hand.  _

_ Hope you’re well,  _

_ Harry _

—

When they come together the second time, after Harry’s crying has died down and after his constant reassurance, it’s a collision. 

They’re sloppy in the way they’re trying to underdress each other. As if there’s not enough time, or, perhaps, there’s been too much time between them. 

Harry is unbuttoning his shirt with such uncoordinated figor that she eventually tugs on the material until the little buttons are sent scattering across her floor. 

“That was my favorite shirt,” he growls against her mouth, slamming her into the nearest wall. He thrills at the sound she makes as he grips her jaw, pushing her head up to give him better access to her neck. 

_ Merlin,  _ how he’s missed her neck. 

He blazes a trail down it that's still a familiar path.

“I’ll buy you another one,” she groans, thrusting her hips against his. It’s almost too much to bear after so long, and he pushes back until he’s got her hips pinned against the wall. 

“Fuck, Potter.”

“I tried — _ oh god — _ I tried so many times,” Harry starts to ramble, and it takes George a moment to realize that they’re still having the same conversation from earlier during foreplay before they shag and it’s  _ so like them  _ that he laughs a bit against her lips. “I tried so many times to come home.To get back to where you are. I even went to Hogsmeade more than once.”

George pulls back a bit to look at her, before looking back down at her lips and closing the distance again. 

“How many times?” he asks because he needs to know.

“So many. So many I lost count. I just assumed...you had moved on. That you were happy, and I didn’t feel like I had any right to come between that.” 

“God, you’re so thick sometimes do you know that,” he tells her probably a bit too roughly, but she laughs against him and it’s so relieved sounding that he doesn’t think she minds. “I’ve been a wreck without you. Completely fucking miserable.”

“I know that  _ now,  _ but back when I didn’t...back when I thought you had this perfect life and had moved on without me, I wasn’t sure how to come back. I wasn’t sure I was even welcomed back.”

“I love the shop, but I love you more,” he says, kissing her once with his eyes open. “You’re always more to me.”

He watches as her eyes widen at his words. As if she can’t possibly believe them. As if she’s never considered such a possibility. 

And then the next moment she’s kissing him with such a fierceness, he feels as if they’re aflame. He can’t bring his mind to focus on anything other than the heat of Harriet’s kiss.

And maybe it’s the fact that he’s starving for her after four years. 

Maybe it’s the uncertainty still lacing through her voice as she talks to him. 

Or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s  _ here  _ and letting him touch her so willingly, leaning into it and practically purring, but the next moment he scoops her up off the floor, wrapping her legs around his waist as she looks at him with eyes so bright he knows she really sees him.

“Upstairs!” she commands, his lips against her neck. “The bedroom, now!” 

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Autopilot George kicks in again, this time carrying Harry up the stairs with little effort while George locked inside his head is focused on getting Harry to make the same panting noises she had just moments ago, and George has never been more thankful for the bastard. 

He kicks the door open with such force that he has to stick a hand out to brace for it flying back, but Harry is so attached to him that she doesn’t even slide down.

She only pulls back enough to make a sound of surprise when her back hits the mattress, and even that is too much of a distance for George after four years. He closes the gap between them again as he wraps an arm around her waist, dragging her up her unmade bed until her head hits the pillow.

“I’ve thought about this a thousand times,” he says, because he can’t keep any more secrets. He can’t help but tell her everything he’s thinking. “You coming back. How it would go.” 

He raises himself up, tugging his shirt over his head, and doesn’t miss the way she watches him while biting her bottom lip. A small smirk on her face. 

“And how did it go?” she asks, eyeing him appreciatively. His ego swells. “In your head?”

“Always different in the beginning of each scenario,” he says, finding the zipper of her boots and working them off. So many insufferable layers of clothing. “It always ends the same though. Always like this.” 

“Hmm,” she hums, eyes fluttering shut as he continues to undress her. Her jeans slide off, revealing that her legs are just as sun kissed as the rest of her. His own skin has always paled in comparison.

It’s a small detail he seems to have forgotten, and etches it back into his memory as he watches his pale hands run up her thighs to her torso where he lifts the jumper off of her. 

He first notices the larger lightning bolt scar that traces across her chest where Voldemort’s wand hit her, matching the one on her forehead. He knew five years ago that it would mark her, but seeing it now, seeing it stretched across her as a reminder that death could not take her, it hits him how much this war took from her. How much of it she carries with her every day. 

He couldn’t comprehend it then, didn’t  _ want  _ to consider all the ways the war had marked her before, but he does now. 

He can’t help but marvel at how strong she’s had to be. 

“Harry…” he breathes, dragging his fingers across it. She shivers against his touch. 

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “It doesn’t bother me anymore. I forget it’s even there sometimes.”

His finger stops its exploration when it hits her bra strap, and that’s the second thing he notices. 

And his mouth drops open. 

She’s wearing a matching set of bra and knickers he’s never seen before, and the black lace of it causes his breath to hitch. He had been well acquainted with every piece of undergarment she owned when they dated, having pulled them off of her several times. She’s always gone for comfort over style in the past, not that he ever minded before, but this is…

“Holy shit,” he curses as she sits up against the headboard, looking at him shyly. It’s hard to look away from the curves she’s grown into over the past five years, silhouetted and defined even more by the way her undergarments hug them. 

She changed and shifted. Still the same person, but somehow different. She’s more than she ever was five years ago, and he feels like there are parts of her he hasn’t explored as he’s looking at her now. Parts of her that she’s willing to let him, that she’s trusting him with. 

“Is this...okay?” she asks, looking for reassurance. 

_ Is it okay that I’ve changed,  _ is what she’s really asking.  _ Are you okay with me like this? _

Can she not see his wide blown eyes? 

Can she not see how dumbstruck he is by her?

“I love you,” he says, finding he can still speak. “I love you so much. Just as you are. Just as you’ve been. Whatever you’re going to end up being. I love all sides of you. I always will.”

She closes her eyes as he speaks to her, and he watches as a stray tear that hadn’t worked its way out before slides down her cheek. He kisses her again, tasting relief against her lips. A thousand promises are in this kiss, and in the way she cups his face. 

She loves him. She’s never stopped. Even as she’s changed over the years, her love for him never did. It only grew, and he can feel it pouring into him as she opens her mouth into the kiss and lays back down on the bed, dragging him down with her.

And she gives herself to him fully, and he takes her home. 

\--

George wakes up twice. 

The first time in the middle of the night when he’s certain that everything that’s happened has been a dream. He waits for the sinking feeling of realization that she’s gone to hit him, but she shifts next to him, turning to face him in her sleep and he realizes that it’s never coming, that awful feeling he’s had every morning when he has to remember everything all over again. 

It’s never coming again. 

He watches her for a few more moments, seeing her sigh, content as she sleeps. He pulls her closer to him, kissing the place on her shoulders where the freckles scatter again because he’s allowed to do so, and drifts back to sleep. 

The second time he wakes up, he’s in bed alone. He blinks in confusion for a few moments, patting the bed next to him, before the smell of bacon frying hits his nose. He grins, realizing she’s just downstairs. 

He takes his time as he dresses, surveying her room for some sort of sign of how she’s lived the past few years. Her belongings in her room are just as scattered as the rest of the house, but he can tell she has gained more of them through the years. 

A stack of books catch his eye, and George moves towards her nightstand to find her Austen novels piled up. The very same ones he tracked down for her after her aunt got rid of them years ago. A book called  _ Emma  _ sits on the very top with a mark holding her place. He clutches it to him, breathing in the smell of the summer they started dating. He wonders if she’ll let him borrow it.

He vows to buy her a bookshelf so they’ll have a proper place as he sets it back down.

His shirt is mysteriously missing, but he thinks he knows where it is as he hops into his jeans. Sure enough, when he enters the kitchen there she stands in nothing but his — newly fixed —shirt and a pair of knickers. 

“You fixed my shirt,” he comments, his eyes unable to waver from the frame of her arse for a moment. 

“You said it was your favorite,” she says. “It was a pain to find all the little buttons this morning.”

She keeps her back to him, and George can tell from the tense hold of her shoulders that it’s not just to keep an eye on the bacon. She’s two seconds away from one of her infamous freak outs and the fear that bubbles in his gut is worse than anything he’s ever felt before. 

_ No, no, no,  _ he thinks.  _ Not again. Don’t do this again. I can't lose you again.  _

“Harriet,” he says, grabbing her hand and turning her to look at him. Sure enough worry lines are etched all over her face. “What’s wrong?”

She draws a shaky breath. “I was just — I’ve been such a  _ coward. _ I’ve been hiding in plain sight for so long, afraid to come home. And you — you just took me back. Without a second thought, and I don’t...I don’t deserve that.”

“Hey, hey,” he says, cupping her face and brushing away fresh tears. “Look at me. You are a lot of things, Harriet Potter, but a coward is not one of them. So you got lost for a little bit? What matters is that you found your way back.”

“You’re — you’re too soft on me,” she cries. “Too patient.”

George smiles. “I’m allowed to be soft when it comes to you. You’re the only one I’m soft for, Potter.”

“I’m just...I’m scared, George. I left because I couldn’t figure out how to be your girlfriend. What if I can’t figure it out again? What if I’m not what you expect and you figure out somewhere down the line that you don’t like this version of me?”

“Harriet, stop!” George shouts, startling her so much that she jumps. “You don’t have to be a certain way to be my girlfriend. You don’t have to be this complete person for me. You’re allowed to be figuring things out as you go. To figure yourself out. I love you, and you love me too, right?”

She nods, eyes watery. 

“Then that’s all that matters to me,” he says. “We can figure this out together. All that matters is that we try.”

“What if not everyone else is as...understanding as you?” Harry asks, and he knows she’s referring to his family. To the rest of the Weasleys who she also disappeared from without so much as a word. 

“Just...come with me to the party. We can figure everything out later. My family will just be happy you’re home. That you’re okay.” 

She swipes at her eyes, red-rimmed by now. “You think so?”

“I know so. You’re practically mum's favorite kid, you know.”

Harry laughs at this before wiping her eyes one last time, and offering him a soft smile.

“Okay,” she says. 

“Okay?”

“I trust you.”

George closes his eyes at those words, letting them sink in as he rests his forehead against hers. It’s all he’s ever wanted, for her to put her faith in him. For her to let him guide and take care of her for a change. 

“Good,” he says. He sniffs the air. “I think the bacon is burning.”

“Wha —  _ oh shit!”  _ Harry curses, moving to cut the eye of the stove top off. “I’ve never burned bacon before!”

“Looks like I’m not the useless one in the kitchen now,” George says, giving her a wink. 

He laughs as he dodges the kitchen rag she throws at him. 

\--

The Burrow is bustling with more people than it’s had in years. 

George doesn’t realize how long it’s been since he’s been home until he’s standing in front of the door, Harry’s hand in his. He doesn’t realize how nervous he is either until he feels her squeeze his hand. 

“You okay?” she asks.

“Terrified,” he answers truthfully. “I haven’t made the best habit out of coming home. They’re probably not expecting me.”

“Well, they definitely aren’t expecting  _ me.  _ I haven’t been to the Burrow in four years. So it can’t be that bad.”

“They’re about to collectively lose their shit when they see the two of us together, huh?” George teases, the grin on his face coming naturally. 

“Most likely,” she says, smiling back.

The longer he looks at her, the more he can’t believe she’s actually here and she’s  _ his.  _ Her blush grows underneath his stare, painting her cheeks a pretty pink, and he bends down to give her a quick kiss. 

“Ready?” George asks, his lips still hovering just above hers. 

“As I’ll ever be.” 

He pushes the door open before he loses any of his Gryffindor courage, tightening his hold on Harry’s hand as he does. His mother notices him first, as she always does. Nearly dropping the cheese platter she’s carrying in her hands. 

“George!” she calls, looking close to tears. “Oh, Georgie! You’ve made it.”

“Hey, wanker,” Fred shouts, raising a Firewhiskey from his seat at the table in a way of greeting, his leg awkwardly stretched out in front of him as it always is now. “Nice of you to finally drop in. Where have you been? I went by your place —”

Harry steps in behind him, and George realizes that they’re still standing in the doorway. No one has noticed her until now, and his mother actually drops the cheese platter with a loud  _ clang!  _

“Hey, everyone,” she greets, sounding a bit unsure. 

Everything is silent for a moment, and then Fred breaks the silence first. 

“Holy shit,” he breaths, staring at Harry like he doesn’t quite recognize her. And then he’s standing, pushing past his mother and George to grip Harry by the shoulders. “Harry?”

Harry smiles, letting go of George’s hands to grip Fred’s arms back as he holds on to her. “Hi, Fred.” 

“Harry!” he nearly shouts, pulling her into a bone crushing hug. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me,” Harry confirms, her voice muffled by Fred’s shirt. “In the flesh.”

“Be careful with her,” George says, trying to loosen his brother’s hold on his girlfriend. 

“You little shite,” Fred chides, hugging Harry tighter. George doesn’t miss the way his brother has tears in his eyes. “Is this where you’ve been? I went by to find you this morning, and you weren't home!”

George rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I was a bit...preoccupied.” 

“Yeah, no kidding,” Fred says, smiling down at Harry as she manages to look up at him. They’re staring teary eyed at each other and George doesn't have the heart to tease them. “Where have you been hiding, yeah?”

“It’s a long story,” Harry says, her voice wavering with relief. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“What’s going on?” Ron’s voice calls before he enters the room with Hermione trailing behind him, their hands clasped together. 

“We thought we heard —” Hermione goes white, looking at Harry still in Fred’s embrace as if she’s seen a ghost. Then she draws in a deep shaky breath. “Oh,  _ Harry!” _

Ron moves first and then Hermione like a flash, jumping to join Fred who is still refusing to let go of Harry in one giant crushing group hug. There’s lots of crying after that, George’s mother moving to hug him while everyone else hugs Harry, and George looks at Harry over the top of his mother’s head, smiling. 

“Welcome home,” he tells her. 

\--

Later, after George’s mum has overfed everyone, Harry especially, and things have started to settle for the night, George notices that Harry has gone missing. 

The Burrow is significantly quieter than it was when they first arrived, and George passes hushed conversations from room to room in his search for her. 

“She’s upstairs,” his dad tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. 

“How’d you know —”

“You’ve got tunnel vision for that girl,” his dad answers simply. “You’re always looking for her. Even these past few years, you’ve never stopped.”

“I just...couldn’t give her up,” George explains, but he knows he doesn’t have to. Not to his dad.

“I know,” his dad says, something like pride in his voice. “You love her. How could you ever give that up? Now, go. Make sure she’s alright.” 

George grins at his dad, bounding the stairs two at a time. He finds her again where he doesn't expect her. Maybe that’s how he always should be looking for her. The most unexpected places. 

“Hey,” he says, pushing the door to his old room open. She’s standing there by the window as she did years ago, but this time when she turns to look at him, she’s no longer haunted. She smiles and he watches the way he reaches her eyes. 

“Hey,” she says, reaching a hand out for him. He takes it willinging. “Sorry. I just needed a moment to breathe.”

“No need to apologize,” he says, lifting her hand to his lips. He kisses the words  _ I must not tell lies  _ probably for the thousandth time in his life. He vows to kiss them a thousand more after today. 

“It’s crazy,” she says, shaking her head. “I just...didn’t expect any of this.”

“Any of what?”

“Being able to come home. Being allowed to. Everyone is taking me in without a second thought.”

“I told you,” he says, pulling on one of her curls like he wanted to just yesterday. He watches it bounce back into place. Just like Harry has. “You’re always going to be wanted.”

She closes her eyes at this, smiling slightly. “It’s nice,” she says. “To be wanted.”

“It is.”

When she opens her eyes, she’s looking right at him. Seeing him for who he is, allowing him to look back at her. Allowing him to see her fully. 

“I have so much I’ve wanted to tell you these past few years. So much I wanted to let you know, but mostly I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me.” 

She gives him a fierce look, one that would make anyone else back down. One she’s used when she’s been in the middle of so many battles. But George has been forged in the ferocity of her looks, so he maintains eye contact. 

“But I do though. What I did… it wasn’t right. Just running away like that, and not coming back. And part of me feels like, because I had to keep such a big secret from you with what Dumbledore asked me to do during the war, it made it so much harder to tell you everything else after.”

“Then tell me. Tell me everything. Whenever you’re ready, I’m going to be here willing to listen. I promise.”

She smiles softly, looking back out the window where they can see a game of Quidditch has started forming. He wonders for a moment if their conversation is over, but then she speaks again, keeping her eyes forward. 

“I really did die, you know,” she says, still not looking at him. “That day in the forest. He did manage to kill me. Voldemort, of course.”

George frowns. He knows this. He’s always known deep down that she had. She couldn’t bear the mark on her chest if she hadn’t been struck by the killing curse again.

But it has always been so difficult for him to come to terms with. 

He resists the natural urge to push back. To tell her not to speak. 

He is also to blame for the state they found themselves in by shutting her down so many times when she tried to open up to him.

“Harry…”

“You were my last thought,” she says, her voice quivering a bit. “Before I died, you were the last thing I thought of. I loved you enough to die for you. It gave me peace.”

George didn’t realize back then — before the war, after the war — when he thought he wanted all the answers, just how hard it would be for him to have to hear them all. How hard Harry had been trying to tell him, and how hard he had been actively trying not to listen and then getting frustrated with her for his own misunderstanding.

His whole body is shaking thinking of Harry staring down Voldemort’s wand, and thinking of him before she dies. 

“And then...after. Wherever after really is, I saw Dumbledore and we spoke for a bit. He gave me answers I had been searching after for a while, and he offered me a choice.”

George swallows. “What sort of choice?”

“To stay there. To stay dead. Or to go back.” She turns to look at him finally, and he sees the quiet courage in her eyes. “Do you know why I chose to come back?”

He shakes his head, unable to speak. 

“Because of you,” she tells him. “I love you enough to die for you, but I also love you enough to live for you.”

George can’t speak for a long while after that. His brave, noble girl, carrying around all that weight on her shoulders for years. No wonder she ran. No wonder she didn’t know how to deal with it. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to. 

“I’m glad you came back,” he says, feeling almost selfish for it. “I’m glad you came back to me. No matter how long it took you.”

Harry smiles at him. “I’m glad too.”

There is still much more to say, but George knows they have plenty of time for everything. They’ve got all the time in the world, but right now nothing is more pressing than the feel of Harry’s hand in his and the way she’s looking at him. 

A shout interrupts them, and they look down to see Ron flagging them down. 

“We need more players!” he shouts up to them when Harry opens the window. “You know Hermione is rubbish on a broom!” 

“ _ Ronald!”  _

George laughs, turning towards Harry. “What do you think?”

“It does sound fun,” she admits. “I just wish…”

“What?”

“I wish I still had my old broom,” she says, smiling at him sadly. “I donated it awhile ago in a bout of insanity. Girls who run away from home don’t deserve nice things, you know.”

_ Oh that,  _ George thinks stupidly for a moment before realizing…

“I have your broom.”

Harry gawks at him. “What?”

“I have it,” he repeats, moving to his old closet. “Here actually. I was the one who bought it in a similar bout of insanity.”

He’s aware of Harry’s presence close behind him as he searches through piles of his old junk for the thing he buried in back years ago. 

“You bought my broom?  _ You?”  _

“When you have so little of someone,” he says, smiling when his fingers come in contact with the birch bristles. “You take what you can get.”

He pulls the broom out, handing it to Harry who stares at it with unbelieving eyes before taking it with shaky fingers and hugging it to herself. 

“You bought my broom,” she repeats, her voice quivering. How many times would they cry around each other until they go it all out, he wondered. 

“I did,” he says. “When I saw that you were auctioning it off to charity...I just had to get it. It was all I had left of you. And then I was afraid I would burn it in a fit of rage, you know, like an idiot, so I kept it here. Where it would be safe.”

“I — I can’t believe this,” Harry says, looking down at her broom and then back to him. “I can’t believe you’re the one who got her. I thought she was lost forever.” 

George smiles. “Not forever. Just for a little bit. She’s back where she belongs now.” 

Harry laughs, and George doesn’t miss the way her broom vibrates from under her fingertips, responding to their bond. Content and happy to be home, just like Harry. 

“So… Quidditch?” he asks, holding his hand out to her. 

She nods. “Quidditch.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!

**Author's Note:**

> A few more notes:
> 
> 1.) Please remember, George is not a reliable narrator. 
> 
> 2.) Please be kind to female characters. They're allowed to have flaws.


End file.
